Flashes of Panic

It turns out that there’s two kinds of “difficult” about this graduate school application thing. There’s “difficult,” as in, “this is going to take some time to sit down and plug away at.” And there’s “difficult,” as in, “I really don’t feel at all comfortable doing this.”

There seems to be a lot more of the second one than the first. It’s stuff I first heard from an acquaintance who is a CS professor at the College, and had underlined when I talked to the Career office there last week: with my unusual academic preparation, I’m going to need to contact people in the departments I want to study with, talking with them (face to face talking, not “talking” by email,) and find out if they think I’ve got a chance of staying afloat. Actually, I need to convince them that I will stay afloat if they give me a chance; I should also be using these discussions to get a feel for whether I’m likely to enjoy spending a few years in the department.

I also need to ask other people to spend a chunk of their time writing me letters of recommendation. I’ve asked three, two have agreed, one hasn’t responded. I have two others to ask.

I’m profoundly bad at this.

Not at talking to people; I talk just fine, once I get started. Sometimes I don’t stop when I should, actually. It’s making the contact, figuring out who at the department I should be talking with (and sometimes the department appears to be trying to avoid this sort of conversation,) then actually making the appointment and walking in their office. I will procrastinate all of these steps endlessly. I think I could even say I dread them. I don’t know why.

I don’t even particularly like talking to people on the phone, for some reason. I’d vastly prefer email, where I’m in control of my end of the conversation. When you come right down to it, look at this site: this whole thing is the appearance of sharing my life and thoughts while retaining full control over what I really tell you all. Some of you who’ve commented and whose weblogs I’ve read, I’d probably do all right with, but if someone reading this, who I don’t know in any other context, was to approach me “on the street” and initiate a conversation about the site, I would probably be profoundly uncomfortable for a few minutes. (Unless you got me wound up on one of my hot-button topics, in which case I’d forget that I didn’t know you while I unloaded my thoughts on the matter, and you glanced around uncomfortably looking for an escape route.)

I’m not at all crippled by this, of course; I talk to strange people on the phone every day when they call with software problems. I’m actually fairly good at it. I’ve learned that when the call comes, if I just reach over and punch the button and start talking, I’m fine. If I step off the pool deck and plunge right in, I’m ready to start swimming.

But these pseudo-interview contacts are excruciating because I can put them off.

I need to stop.

I need to make a real nag out of myself, in fact, because I can’t do this by myself, and the sooner it happens, the better. Deadlines are coming within a fairly small number of months. I should set a goal, like having at least two, possibly three arranged by the end of this week.

Update, Thursday 9/30: Got a third LOR agreement, a lead on who to talk to at one school, and an appointment (!!) at another. I still need another appointment!

Now playing: The Time Being from Somewhere Else by The Church